


Scarlet City

by openended



Category: Grey's Anatomy, Private Practice
Genre: 1930s, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Historical, F/M, Gangsters, Gen, Minor Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-09-14
Updated: 2011-09-13
Packaged: 2017-10-23 17:45:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 18,195
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/253075
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/openended/pseuds/openended
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>September, 1939.  As Europe marches off to war, Seattle has its own problems.  A crime boss running circles around the police threatens to undermine what little stability still exists.  Detective Preston Burke will have to fight his way through a dangerous tangle of gambling, prostitution, and suspected murder in order to unearth the truth and take down Addison Montgomery.  Plus, there’s the matter of working girls who keep showing up on the coroner’s slab…</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. city streets

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to: **nursebadass** , who beta’ed, fanmixed and did some fabulous art for this; she put up with me ignoring it for months in favor of another big bang (which, incidentally, she also beta’ed and fanmixed). Also thanks to: Wikipedia, Google, _But He Was Good to His Mother_ by Robert A. Rockaway, the fabulous Australian series “Underbelly Razor,” Dashiell Hammett in general, “Kansas City Confidential,” “The Asphalt Jungle,” and the 2010 AAA guide to Oregon and Washington.

She watches from the shadows as the police gather at the docks. Next to her, he lights a match, the flame flaring in the dark before calming as he moves it to the cigarette firmly between his lips. The wind whips through her hair and carries fractured words of the officers.

“That didn’t take long,” she muses, crossing her arms and leaning against the brick wall of the building.

He shrugs and exhales a cloud of expressive smoke. “We led them to him.” The unspoken _you told us to_ floats on the air, dissolving as the smoke disperses in the night. The wind catches his hat and he grips the brim, tugging it more firmly onto his head. He turns, mirroring her posture, and the moonlight gleams off the hardware of his suspenders.

“Let’s hope it works,” she says, licking her lips. She impatiently taps her heel on the broken concrete, waiting for the police to do something other than gather and mull over the situation. She checks the clock tower and frowns; she’ll be fashionably late in twenty minutes, irredeemably late in thirty. It’s a fragile balance.

“It will,” he reassures her. He bends over, brushing away a scuff on his shoe.

One of the officers strips down to his undershirt and shorts and toes off his shoes. With strong strokes, he swims out to where a lumpy shadow has been bumping in the waves since they arrived. He grasps the shadow and swims back to the dock, offering up a limp, dead arm to the men standing above.

Two men haul the body out of the water, struggling to maneuver the uncooperative weight onto the waiting sheet for the coroner; another offers the swimmer his hand and a towel.

“That’s Hunt, alright,” a voice carries to where the two stand, anxious and hidden.

“Body’s been in the water too long; we’re not going to find anything,” the coroner says, standing up. She puts her hat back on her head.

Satisfied with the identification, she nods to her companion and he smiles at her. “I don’t thank you enough for what you do for me.”

He offers her his arm and she slides her hand to grasp his elbow. “Shall we?”


	2. king of the underworld

“Burke,” the Chief’s voice booms before he drops a file onto the detective’s desk. It lands with a thud loud enough to draw the attention of the other two detectives in the room and three secretaries who should have been doing something else.

Preston Burke looks up from the picture he had been studying through a magnifying glass, trying to make out the license plate on a getaway car from Hahn’s bank robbery case. Her leads had dried up weeks ago until the car picture surfaced, but she couldn’t make out the details. He’s trying to help her out in his spare time, give the force some reason to believe they hadn’t screwed up by giving her a detective’s badge; someone had done the same for him. Unluckily for her, there’s a potted plant in the way of the last two numbers but the last hour’s eyestrain means she could have a reasonable lead. He’d have to tell her that he’s off charity work for a while, though, as he eyes the two inches of a file that had barely missed knocking his cold cup of bad coffee off his desk. “Yes, Chief?”

“I’m redistributing O’Malley’s load. The Montgomery case is now yours. I’m having the rest of it brought up from storage. Treat it well.”

Burke leans back in his chair and steeples his fingers under his chin. He alternates between glaring at the file and glaring at the Chief. “The man’s been in the ground for,” he glances at the clock on the wall, “five hours, Chief.”

“Montgomery doesn’t care about that, Burke. Keep me updated.”

Burke glares at the file one last time before sitting up straight and putting the surveillance photo back into the folder it came in. He picks up the folder and the cold cup of coffee and drops the coffee into his trash can and sets the folder on Hahn’s desk, scribbling a note with what he was able to make out and that he got stuck with the Montgomery case so she’ll have to find another sharp set of eyes to borrow for a while. He brings a new cup of coffee, barely above lukewarm, back to his desk and sits down again. He reaches over and picks up the file and slides off the broken rubber band holding it all together.

He’s never been able to read O’Malley’s writing, so the other man’s notes get pushed aside. He starts from the beginning.

> Name: Addison Forbes Montgomery (née Shepherd)  
> Known Aliases: Addie, Satan, Red  
> Spouse: Derek Shepherd (divorced)  
> Occupation: None (“philanthropist”)  
> Known Associates: Mark Sloan, Alex Karev, Callie Torres  
> Wanted in Connection With: Arson (NY); Murder (NY, WA); Pandering (NY, WA); Pimping (NY, WA); Gambling (NY, WA); Money Laundering (WA); Alcohol Possession (NY; retroactive, 1929-1933)

Burke skips over the rest of the outlined details – they won’t help him any. He flips to page one of her rap sheet and stares at the picture paper-clipped to the paper; a mug shot, from when they brought her in three years ago on gambling charges the DA couldn’t make stick. She stares up at him in stark black and white, eyebrow cocked as if she knew she wouldn’t be there long.

The rap sheet is the longest he’s ever seen, running the gamut from petty larceny and jaywalking to arson, prostitution and murder. He’s known about her for years, ever since she came to this town fresh from an acquittal in New York that cost a DA his job. Most of what he knows is hearsay, rumors, assumptions made over the coffee maker or at the deli counter they all frequent for lunch, but some of it is fact he’s discovered on his own.

There’s a scar on his shoulder, a gift from a bullet when he forgot to get out of the way. Shepherd had been taking the bullet out of him, off the books and after hours, when the man had mentioned he used to be married to the city’s crime boss. Burke had startled at the news, causing Shepherd to slip and leaving a scar. It itches from time to time.

Shepherd works the night shift at the hospital and Burke considers him one of the more reliable informants. In exchange for removing the occasional bullet and remembering what patients shout at each other, Burke keeps Shepherd’s name clean each time a beat cop tries to cite him for solicitation with his girlfriend. Burke figures it’s not Shepherd’s fault his girl chooses to make a living without her clothes on. Meredith thanked him for it once, when she happened to be hanging around the hospital entrance waiting for Shepherd to be done for the night, but she steers clear of Burke whenever possible. Burke has his suspicions about her employer.

Burke flips through the remaining pages of the file; he knows there’s more coming up from storage and he’ll need a separate file cabinet just to hold it all. His finger catches on her fact sheet from New York and he scans through the faded words. His eyes land on the word _doctor_ next to _occupation_ and he frowns. He’s seen “The Doctor” as an alias in files before, usually taken to mean “someone who will cut useful parts off you if you don’t cooperate,” but never as actual occupation of someone cited for more than drunk and disorderly or the occasional domestic dispute. He ruffles through the pages, looking for reference, and finds it: OB-GYN at Mt. Sinai General Hospital.

“Huh,” he says to himself out loud. He wonders how someone goes from a life of medicine and saving lives to a life of crime and ending them. Money, probably.

He tosses the file on his desk and grabs his hat and coat, intending to grab a late lunch.

He can’t really blame her. He loves his job, but it barely pays the bills.

* * *

  
“You need to stop worrying,” Addison says to Callie, leaning back against the bar and crossing one long leg over the other.

“I’m not worrying,” Callie says monotonously, her mind otherwise occupied with counting and organizing the stacks of bills in front of her. Finished with one stack, she makes a note of the amount and turns her attention back to Addison. “I’m just sayin’, they led them right to him. Was that smart?”

Addison yawns; she and Mark had rolled into bed sometime far beyond a reasonable hour. “As much as we might like to think so, the cops in this town are not stupid. But with O’Malley dead, it’d take them days to even realize Hunt was missing, a couple more to find him. If the fish hadn’t gotten to him, a boat would’ve run over him and we’d be lucky if they could identify him.”

Callie cracks her neck and starts in on the next pile. Working for Addison pays well – more than well, actually – but has its unexpected twists. Like discussing murder over cocktails. She finishes her martini and offers Addison the olives. The redhead takes the toothpick with a smile and pops it into her mouth, sliding the wooden pick out between her teeth and dropping it back into Callie’s empty glass. “He was really gonna snitch.”

Addison nods slowly. “Yep. Bastard.”

“Didn’t think he had it in him.”

Addison laughs, low and without any humor. “Neither did I.”

* * *

  
Burke stares at the body on the table, glad he hadn’t made it to lunch. “Owen Hunt?” He asks, squinting to read the toe tag.

Dr. Arizona Robbins snaps off her gloves and drops them in the bin. “Yep.” She cracks her gum and releases her hair from its ponytail before gathering it up again to pull away from her face. “Your guys found him in the Sound last night.”

Burke checks the clock. Almost six. “You’re just now getting to him?”

She jerks her thumb in the direction of the freezer. “I got a long list of bodies, Burke. What do you want from me?”

Burke smiles apologetically; he knows the coroner’s been overrun lately. There’s a string of dead prostitutes that Duquette’s been working on. “How’d he die?”

She pulls on another pair of gloves and grabs Hunt’s bluish grey shoulder and pulls, revealing his back. She points at the matted hair on the back of his head. “Gunshot wound.”

“So, not drowning.”

Arizona purses her lips and stares at him. “When was the last time you people pulled a body out of the water that hadn’t died long before it made it in there?” With Burke sufficiently chastised, she lets Hunt’s body drop back to the slab and continues. “Rope burns on his wrists and ankles, suggest he was tied up. Probably to a chair. Bruises on his face,” she gestures, “and abdomen, they probably worked him over first.”

“Yeah,” Burke says, “O’Malley had convinced him to fold on Montgomery.”

“No kidding,” she says smoothly. “Guess she didn’t like that too much.”

“Guess not.” Burke flips his hat back onto his head. “Let me know if you find anything else.”

She nods and blows a bubble. It pops. “Absolutely.”

* * *

  
A new, full martini glass makes its way into her line of vision and the empty one disappears. She looks up from the newspaper and smiles at the bartender. “Thanks, Alex.”

“No problem,” he says with a grin, wiping down the mahogany bar. “Anything good?” He nods to the newspaper in front of her. It’s slow right now in the bar, but it’ll pick up once the theater across the street lets out for intermission.

Addison frowns and studies the front page. “Adolf Hitler, in true fashion of being a pain in Europe’s ass, invaded Poland last week while you were out of town. Looks like war.”

Alex exhales; he was too young to fight in the Great War, but he remembers that it was supposed to end all wars. That didn’t last long. He starts polishing the tray of newly-washed glasses just brought out from the kitchen. “Roosevelt’s staying out of it, I see,” he reads the first lines of the article upside down.

“And why shouldn’t he? It’s all the way over there. We have our own problems.” She knows they’ll be in it sooner or later – they were last time, too – but she’d like that to be as far in the future as possible. “Of course, Chamberlain’s not actually doing anything about it…”

Alex lets her ramble about Europe and politics for a minute while he scans the other headlines. “O’Malley’s dead,” he says, coming to the bottom of the page. The lettering is distorted from his angle, but he can make out enough of it. He’d been down in Portland for two weeks, cleaning up the mess left by Sam Bennett – a man Addison thought competent enough to run his own city, until he got himself shot by a cop. Hunt had become an overwhelming problem to deal with the day Alex got back, and caused Alex to miss quite a lot of news: war in Europe, and O’Malley’s untimely demise.

“Hm?” She takes a calculated sip of her martini. “Oh, yes,” she looks back down at the paper, sliding it up so the article in question is on the flat surface of the bar. She pretends to skim for the gory details. “Got caught in the crossfire of that shootout over on Pike the other night. Funeral was today.”

Alex picks up the tone in his boss’s voice. “Did we have anything to do with that?” He asks quietly. The bar may be empty save a few regulars and early birds, but he’s long learned not to trust old men to have shoddy hearing.

Addison looks up at him through her eyelashes. “It was crossfire,” she says, “the man was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Even we’re not that clever, Alex.”

Alex nods and takes the non-answer at face value. He and Addison are more off than on lately, owing to her and Mark being more on than off, but he still runs in the center circle of her operation and knows when to drop the subject.

* * *

  
Burke shuts his apartment door behind him and cracks his neck before dropping his briefcase on the floor and hanging his hat and jacket on the hook behind the door.

“About time you got home.”

He opens his eyes and scans the apartment. Black hair lit up by the single light she’s turned on; fell asleep reading on the couch, then. “I’m sorry. I was working late.”

She sits up and sleepily runs her fingers through the tangles of hair. “New case?” She can tell by his body language, even on the other side of the room and in shadows, that he’s not happy about it.

He bends over and unties his shoes, placing them carefully out of the way of the door. On the walk home, he’d been looking forward to an empty apartment, a glass of scotch, and spreading the case materials he’d managed to fit into his briefcase over the kitchen table and possibly working until the sun rose. But now that he is home, he’s thankful for Cristina’s presence. He hadn’t quite realized how exhausted he is; Hahn keeps telling him that he’s working too hard for what the city isn’t paying him, and Cristina gives him the perfect excuse to wait until tomorrow. “Yes,” he says, walking barefoot over to her. He kisses her forehead before detouring into the kitchen to pour himself – and her – the glass of scotch he wanted.

She pushes herself up and covers a yawn. “What’cha get?”

He screws the cap back on the bottle and picks up both glasses. “Addison Montgomery.”

Cristina whistles in awe. “That’s a bitch.” She’d known O’Malley was working it; he’d come into her bar a few times asking questions she’d skillfully not answered. “Why’d Webber give it to you?” She takes a mouthful of scotch and lets it sit on her tongue before swallowing.

Burke shrugs and falls into the chair by the window. He looks outside, the rain making shadows darker and gaslights brighter. “Just lucky, I guess.” He’d actually just finished a few cases. Either that or the Chief wants him preoccupied for the foreseeable future.

Cristina sets the glass down on the coffee table and lifts her hair off her neck before letting it drop again. “Let’s get one thing straight,” she says, “I’m not telling you anything.”

“I didn’t ask…” he silences at the finger she holds up.

“Already my customers are worried because they think I’m gonna tell you everything.” She’d been outed as a cop’s girlfriend several months ago thanks to a pushy press photographer at some swanky police affair she hadn’t been able to avoid; if there hadn’t been photographic evidence in the paper the next day, she would’ve kept her boyfriend’s occupation secret. “If they think I’m gonna snitch to you every mention of Montgomery, I’m out of business.”

“Cristina. I am not asking you to do that.” He knows that her bar runs on a delicate mixture of alcohol, making book, and secrets. It’s because of the secrets (and the owner) that the department turns the other way on the betting; she never names her customers, only the information they share over one too many drinks. Her customers know this and keep coming back for the gambling and the well-mixed gin and tonics; they’d gone silent after the picture in the paper, but she’s gradually won them back over. But if word gets out that she’s sharing anything with him now that he’s working the Montgomery case, all tips and gossip are gone; Montgomery casts a wide net and people curiously come back to work missing a finger or an eye when they mention her in the wrong crowd.

“Good,” she says, draining the last of her scotch. She stands and the afghan that had been covering her legs drops to the couch. “‘Cause the moment you do, I’m out of here.” She turns off the lamp, leaving Burke to sit in the darkness.

* * *

  
Addison rolls off of Mark, both of them breathing heavily in the aftermath of their lovemaking. She tugs the sheet up around her waist and props herself up on her elbow while watching Mark light a cigarette. It’s a habit she never picked up, but one she allows him.

“You have a new detective,” he says, exhaling a satisfied line of smoke toward the open window.

She chuckles lowly. “Of course I do. Webber wouldn’t want me gallivanting around unchecked for much longer.”

Mark turns his head and looks at her over his shoulder; her skin glows silver in the moonlight. “They’ll never catch you,” he says.

Addison scoffs. “Never say never,” she reminds him; her acquittal in New York still remains a mystery to those outside this room. The evidence was there and so were the testimonies: the police had learned their lesson and placed all witnesses in a safe house upstate until the trial and then kept them locked in the courthouse after the trial began. Only a few well-placed threats and money in the correct hands had kept her from several life sentences of jail time. “Who is it?” She’d known her case would be the first Webber would reassign after O’Malley’s funeral, but hasn’t yet heard who it is.

“Preston Burke,” Mark says, folding his arm behind his head as he lies down.

Addison ponders this, trying to remember his name. “Doesn’t he usually work solicitation and theft?”

Mark looks at her sideways. “Yes.” Besides murder, which doesn’t bring in too much money (though it does eliminate a lot of problems), and gambling, which only sometimes has the big payoff, most of her business is prostitutes and money laundering.

“What do we know about him?”

“Not much,” Mark admits. “He plays it straight.”

Addison snorts. Very few members of the Seattle Police Department are completely straight. Not many are completely crooked either. Most just bend the rules and sometimes look the other way in exchange for money or small favors.

“Want me to look into him?”

Nodding, Addison watches as the rain beats patterns onto the window pane, casting distorting shadows over the bed. “Have someone else do it, in case he’s smarter than we think. Freedman, if he still works for me.” Cooper Freedman had been one of her first hires when she moved to the city; working as a researcher for the Seattle Times, he’d been on the verge of being evicted until she came along to supplement his income and provide him with more interesting topics. Rumor has it that he’s about to make a move south to California. The LA Times pays better than Seattle and since all he ever does is look into things for her, she has no problem with him moving except that she’ll need to find a new researcher.

Mark stubs out the cigarette and pops a mint into his mouth from the tin he keeps by the bed. She allows him the habit, but with concessions. “I’ll talk to him in the morning.”

* * *

  
Burke steps off the elevator and nods to Erica Hahn, standing by the coffee maker as if sheer force of will is going to make it percolate faster. He blinks twice at the contents of the overnight holding cell. “Kepner, what are you doing here again?” He greets the girl sitting in the corner of the cell, pouting angrily at anyone who walks by.

“Your buddy Duquette thought I’d be safer here,” she says, attitude radiating off her like too much cheap perfume.

Burke looks over at Denny’s desk and frowns. It’s empty, but the mug of coffee is still steaming. “Where is he?”

“Morgue,” Hahn says blandly. “Another dead girl last night.”

“Jesus,” Burke mutters. “That makes, what? Three in the last two weeks.”

“Uh huh,” she nods, brushing past him to get back to her desk.

“Yeah,” April sasses from behind the bars, “and what are you guys doin’ about it, huh? We’re out there scared for our lives tryin’ to earn a buck and you’re sittin’ in here, comfy and safe, doin’ jack shit about some freak out there killin’ us.”

“Maybe if you found yourself a legitimate job you wouldn’t be having this problem,” Hahn sasses back from across the room. “If she’s not being held for anything, can someone get rid of her?”

Burke stifles a laugh. “If you’re earning just a dollar, perhaps you really ought to consider a different line of work,” he advises with a smirk and walks away, ignoring the rude gesture she throws in his direction. A beat cop comes by with the keys and releases April, who sways out of the room without another word.

The elevator opens, revealing Denny Duquette with a nice black eye. Burke frowns; the other detective is prone to getting himself injured or shot on the job.

“How are you not six feet under yet?” Erica asks, looking up from her desk with a smile. After the incident with the rabid cat, she’s just stopped asking _how_ the man hurts himself so frequently.

Denny smiles. “Luck.” He drops the coroner’s report on his desk and falls into the chair. It squeaks.

“Who’s dead now?” Burke asks, his curiosity getting the better of him. The murders started a few months ago, too far apart to connect. But two weeks ago, they escalated. They’d tried to connect them to Montgomery, thinking she was cleaning out the competition, but it hadn’t fit her MO: the girls who aren’t on her payroll make up such a small portion of the city’s hookers and fulfill a particularly unique set of desires that Montgomery’s girls stay far away from. Besides, Montgomery was more likely to bring a girl onto her turf than murder her; it’s better business that way.

Sighing, he flips open the report, needing a reminder despite seeing her naked and dead on Robbins’ slab only ten minutes earlier. “Stevens. Isobel Stevens. Blonde. Throat slit.”

Burke muses over this news for a moment. Stevens makes seven and there is nothing to connect the dead girls together, except that they’re all hookers and all dead. He exhales sharply and leans back in his chair, frowning at the four boxes that have been brought up from storage. He wishes his coworker good luck and takes a knife to the tape sealing the first box. Normally, he’d jump at the chance to help and lend a fresh set of eyes to case files that have long since blurred into one unrecognizable mass of confusion.

But he has his own problems, now.

* * *

  
Cooper Freedman slides into the booth in the back corner of the diner and drops a flimsy envelope on the table in front of him. “So we’re clear. This is the last job I do for her.”

Alex nods and takes the envelope, tucking it into his inside breast pocket. “Any surprises in there?”

“Plays by the book, unless the force tells him otherwise. Got a couple citations on his record for arguing with top brass about things they’re letting slide.” He shrugs. “Girlfriend’s a bartender on the other side of town. Cristina Yang.”

Alex perks up at the mention of the girlfriend. He’s heard Cristina’s name before; they’ve done some business in her bar.

Cooper shakes his head. “I took the liberty of checking her out, too. She’s not gonna be a problem for you guys.”

“How do you know?”

“Emerald City runs on what people tell her. No way she’s going to turn and talk to the boyfriend and ruin that.”

Mulling this over, Alex nods. “Not everyone in this town is stupid, huh?”

“Nope. Now, if you’ll excuse me. I have boxes to pack.”

“Enjoy Los Angeles,” Alex says by way of a goodbye.

Cooper slides out of the booth with not much more than a smile.

* * *

  
“Singles at the counter!” The deli manager, Charlotte King, shouts at the crowd pushing at the doors for lunch.

Burke and Hahn make their way through the masses to find a secluded, unoccupied table at the back of the restaurant. It’s mostly cops and hospital staff, owing to its convenient location across the street from both, but the crowd is peppered with the occasional businessman or lawyer who makes his way down here claiming it has the best roast beef sandwich in town. To Charlotte’s credit, it’s true.

There are three main places in this town to go to for information.

Ambrose’s, the deli, is where you go if you want to find out what the cops know about you. Time it right – late lunchtime on a Friday, usually, when the week’s dragged on too long and they’re more willing to talk shop over a Cobb salad – and sit in the right booth and you can overhear just about anything. The staff, however, is tight-lipped on the matter. They like their cop business and it doesn’t matter how much tip you slide their way: if you so much as look like you’re going to ask after what your waitress has overheard lately, you’ll find yourself waiting a very long time for your food.

The Emerald City Bar, situated on the other side of the hospital, just out of reach of the precinct at closing time, is where you go if you want to make book on the game or fight. Cops trade info from the bartenders the way stock brokers trade on Wall Street on the other side of the country. The bartenders mostly stick to small crimes, their information good enough and constant enough for any beat cop or detective worth their salary to ignore what goes on in the back rooms. But if a large enough bill makes its way across the counter, a bartender might be convinced to give up something she’s been holding onto for months.

The Archfield Hotel has a dimly-lit restaurant on the first floor and the leather seats of the booths crinkle when you settle into them. Owing to its shadows and discreet staff, every deal worth doing goes down in a corner booth of the Archfield. The quality of your information is directly proportional to the size of your tip. So is the silence of your waiter and for a large enough sum, he’ll swear under oath he’s never seen you before.

“How’s the new case going?” Erica asks, picking up and biting into the kosher pickle that clung desperately to the side of her plate as the waitress brought over their lunch orders.

Burke chews thoughtfully and scans the room for people he doesn’t recognize. The place is way too crowded to allow anyone to overhear them – he’s even having trouble hearing Erica – but it’s worth the discretion anyway, even if he doesn’t have anything earth-shattering to share. “I have a dead body I can easily link to her via common sense but not with any evidence and a dead body I’d like to link to her but can’t.”

“You get saddled with O’Malley’s case, too?”

He shakes his head. “No, thankfully. Chief’s officially writing that one off as an accident.”

“Accidentally got shot in the head.” She lifts an eyebrow in disbelief.

Burke shrugs and studies his sandwich. “A lot of guns in that fight; Robbins just finished all of the bodies. Said she couldn’t tell which bullets came from who.”

“Can I get you two anything else?” Miranda pops by, order pad in hand.

Burke smiles at her. They always try to sit in her section if possible. He knows she’s supporting a son on her own – husband walked out a year ago – and working two waitressing jobs; if he can make her life a little easier by tipping her more than he probably should, he will. “No thanks, just the check please.”

* * *

  
Addison watches from the bar as the man walks in. He’s practically dripping with _detective_. She glances down at the tri-folded papers Alex had delivered earlier; there’s a picture stapled to the corner. Even in the low light of the bar, she recognizes him as Preston Burke.

“Heads up,” she says when Alex comes back over and she tips her head in the direction of the door. He’s probably only here to check things out, get familiar with her territory, yet she wants her staff on alert. They’re all smart enough to spot a cop a mile away, especially one so obvious as Burke, but it’s better to tell them ahead of time. Some are better at lying than others.

Mark slides onto the bar stool next to her and kisses her cheek in greeting. He’s been taking care of overdue payments all day and his knuckles are a little more scraped than usual. “What’s,” he starts, then follows what Addison and Alex are pointedly not looking at as the man sits down on the opposite end of the bar, “oh. Want me to take care of him?” He lowers his voice for the offer, almost a whisper. The bar’s started to fill up and the patrons at the tables are occasionally loud with peals of laughter and there are several people between them and the detective, but offered threats of bodily harm are best spoken in hushed tones.

She shakes her head and smiles widely, pretending that they’re talking about something else and he just said something wildly funny. “No,” she says, turning to him, offering Burke a view of the back of her head. “Let’s see what he does.”

The mirror behind the bar affords Burke a fantastic view of most of the establishment; artfully arranged bottles and glasses impede his vision in spots, but for the most part he can see the entire place. He observes quietly, committing everything to memory, certain that a notebook and pen would be conspicuous. He knows Addison pegged him for a detective – perhaps even the detective assigned to her case, why else would a cop be in her bar? – the moment he walked in.

He stays for maybe two hours, nursing his beers as slowly as he can without being annoying about it. Convinced he has enough to start with, he leaves a friendly tip on the bar and takes his leave of the place.

“Hm,” Addison muses. They’d moved to a corner booth when Callie and Arizona arrived from the back entrance. Even though Burke hadn’t looked up – most people would have – she’s certain he noticed both the arrival of the women and their subsequent move.

“Is he going to be a problem?” Mark asks, his arm draped around her shoulders.

Addison tilts her head and stares at the door closing slowly behind Burke. “I don’t know.”

“Want me to take care of him?” He makes the same offer as a few hours ago, but it means something completely different. Earlier, he would’ve simply found a way to make Burke leave the bar. Now, Mark cracks his knuckles.

“No,” Addison says firmly. “Tail him, though. Put Wilder on it.”

“He’s headed to LA with Freedman,” Arizona points out, surfacing from her hushed conversation with Callie. Their relationship is as quiet as they can keep it, mostly so Arizona can keep her job at the city morgue. If the cops found out the coroner is – quite literally – in bed with the city’s main madam, who is on the payroll of the biggest crime boss the city has ever seen, they’d find a way to have her fired in an instant, without any investigation. In exchange for occasionally hiding important evidence from cops who don’t know any better, Arizona lives in an apartment slightly above her pay grade.

Addison throws up a hand. “What is it with that damn city? Pete owes me one more job before he leaves, make it this one.”


	3. dead end

“She had Hunt killed, I know it.” Burke cracks open a peanut shell and pops the nut into his mouth. Seeing Robbins in the bar at Montgomery’s table had been concerning, but he makes a mental note to address that later. He has bigger problems than who may or may not be the coroner’s friends.

Cristina busies herself drying glasses. He really shouldn’t be here after hours – Judge Altman was very clear about that the last time she was in, surveying how her bar was doing – but there’s no dealing with him when he’s in this kind of mood. “Why are you telling me this?” She asks, holding a wine glass up to the light to inspect it. Finding a spot, she puts it on the left side of the counter with the others that need to go back for a second washing.

Burke takes a swig of his beer; he usually goes for scotch, but he’d started with beer at Oceanside earlier (which is not anywhere near the ocean, and he’s yet to understand the meaning behind the name) and prefers to stick with one alcohol per night. “But I can’t tie her to it.” His case notes on Owen Hunt are spread out in front of him across the bar, dirtied with small bits of peanut shells. He comes into the Emerald City to work sometimes; nobody bothers him and if Cristina’s working he gets a discount on drinks. But he’d come here after it closed tonight because he couldn’t face going home just yet, feeling there was something he needed to find out that’s lying just out of reach.

Cristina takes a break from cleaning to lean on the bar. She props her chin in her hand and takes a peanut from the nearly-empty bowl in front of him. “Why not?”

“No evidence,” Burke says. “Coroner’s report says that he was tied and beaten first, shot in the back of the head and then dumped in the Sound. There’s no crime scene.”

She looks at him like he’s being dense. “‘Course there’s a crime scene. Just ‘cause you haven’t found it yet doesn’t mean it’s not there.”

He eyes her, momentarily distracted by her cleavage. “And what do you suggest? That I convince Altman to get me a search warrant for every basement of every building Montgomery might own?”

Cristina scoffs and cracks another peanut. “Of course not. Montgomery didn’t use her own place, she probably wasn’t even there.” She takes a sip of Burke’s beer.

Burke cracks his neck and frowns. “It’s no use anyway. With O’Malley and Hunt dead, so is the case. The entire thing was hanging on Hunt’s testimony.”

“Alright,” Cristina says, recognizing the signs of Burke having had slightly too much beer and transforming from brilliant detective into brooding detective. She shuffles his papers into a pile and leans over the bar to drop them into his briefcase. Wiping down the bar – the peanut shells end up on the floor, which she’ll take care of in the morning – she drapes the wet cloth over the faucet of the sink behind her. “Let’s get you home.”

* * *

  
Pete Wilder loiters inconspicuously on the corner outside Emerald City. The awning of a family-owned grocery store, long closed for the evening, protects him from the ubiquitous rain and a dark trench coat lets him blend in from even the most astute passerby. He ducks his head and cups his hand around the unlit cigarette in his mouth and strikes a match, inhaling sharply to light the tobacco. It catches with a crackle and he exhales out into the rain. He can’t wait to leave this damn city, head south for some sun and a new start.

He’s always stayed on the fringes of Addison’s organization, making most of his living via a moderately successful private investigation basis, specializing in scorned lovers and the recently-widowed. But she’d come along, with perfect timing, as he’d hit a slump and offered him twice his usual rate to keep him on retainer. He’d never been asked to do more than his job and to keep no records other than what he turned over to her.

One more job to do, he reminds himself, and then he can leave this city. He’ll undoubtedly find a new boss in LA, but he doesn’t mind that. He does mind the constant rain.

The door opens and the bartender, Cristina Yang, stumbles out, Preston Burke’s arm looped around her shoulders for support. Pete scoffs quietly; the detective really ought to know better than to get this drunk now that he’s working Montgomery’s case, even if the bar is ostensibly neutral. Judge Altman owns the place and allowing it to become a stronghold of Montgomery would call into question her impartiality on the bench; allowing it to become a cop bar would frighten away almost three-fourths of her clientele.

He waits for the duo to get a block ahead of him before he follows behind them. Burke’s loud enough when he’s drunk that Pete catches snippets of the conversation. It’s nothing spectacular, just his frustration with the case (which Pete thinks is unfounded, since the man’s had it for barely a week) and desire to link Montgomery to Owen Hunt’s death.

Pete covers a snicker at that. Addison got her start in New York after helping Lucky Luciano’s wife give birth; Lucky’s friends, in gratitude, offered her a significant amount of money to leave the hospital and become the house doctor. She’d learned the basics from the likes of Bugsy Siegel and Meyer Lansky and then set up shop in a different borough, hooking up with the mob and Murder Inc. when it suited her and waving them off when it didn’t. Over drinks one night, she told him that the most important lesson she ever learned was in sending messages: “Make everyone and their uncle know that it was you who did it – but don’t let anyone actually trace you.” The entire town knows by now it was Addison’s order that had Owen sleeping with the fish that night and if the cops can’t make something that obvious a solid case, then they’re either incompetent or the coroner’s working both sides. He’s long suspected the latter, since the cops in this town aren’t quite that stupid.

He trails them successfully to Cristina’s apartment and waits on the stoop of the building across the street until a light turns on upstairs. He watches the silhouettes of her taking off his coat and draping him on the sofa. Satisfied that he’s not going to get anything else tonight, he drops his cigarette in a puddle and walks home.

* * *

  
“Look, Duquette. How many times are you gonna get yourself shot this year?” Derek takes a swig from the flask hidden inside his lab coat and frowns at the man sitting in front of him.

Denny sighs and peels off his now-ruined shirt. He tosses it with his uninjured arm into the trash can across from the cot. “I was thinking about going for a record.” Burke may have been the first one to meet Shepherd and use his services, but Denny practically pays the man’s utility bill.

Derek chuckles and snaps on a pair of gloves. “How’d it happen this time?” He starts with the iodine over the bullet hole. It’s embedded in Denny’s shoulder, but not deep and should heal up nicely on its own.

“You know those girls who keep ending up dead? Been trying to figure it out. Though I had a lead tonight, but ended up just being a drunk john. Got pissed that I interrupted his session, shot me as I was leaving.” He hisses as Shepherd starts with the forceps. He’d had a bad reaction to the anesthetic the one time Shepherd used it – to the tune of hallucinating a full carnival in the room, completely with Shepherd as the clown – and now just puts up with the pain if it means not suffering four hours of crazed delusions.

Derek rolls his eyes. He makes a face and pulls out the bullet, dropping it into the pan Denny’s holding with a _clink_. “Keep it for a souvenir.” He opens a sterilized needle and thread. “Did you at least collar the guy for attempted murder?”

“Nah. Seemed more important to get the bullet out.”

“You guys any closer to catching that monster?” Derek asks, starting to suture the bullet wound closed.

Denny sighs dejectedly. He’s not, at all. There’s too much difference in the victims: hair color, eye color, race, height, weight, part of town, cause of death. About the only thing in common is their profession, that they’re dead, most of them have had their throats slit, and as of yet none of them have been Montgomery’s girls. He knows in his gut it’s not Montgomery, though. Even if Burke hadn’t pointed out, over Chinese takeout and beer in the precinct when the murders first started, that it didn’t fit Montgomery’s MO, it’s not at all her style. But he doesn’t say any of this to Shepherd. “I think so,” he says, trying to inject as much hopefulness into his voice as possible.

“Well,” Derek says, finishing taping the bandage to Denny’s shoulder, “good luck to you. Keep an eye on that and…”

“If it starts oozing anything the color of your scrubs, come back in. I know the drill.”

Derek smiles. “Of course you do.” He hands Denny two unlabeled prescription bottles. “Antibiotics,” he holds up one, “painkillers,” he holds up the other. “I don’t want to see you back here for at least a week,” he warns.

Denny hops off the table and, wincing, shrugs on his coat. “I’ll do my best.” He drops a couple of bills on the bed and heads out. Sometimes he wishes that he’d gotten to Shepherd first and, like Burke, could trade medical favors for disappearing citations instead of actually paying, but other times he figures he’s in the hospital frequently enough that Shepherd would’ve asked for a little something extra anyway.

* * *

  
“Counselor,” Judge Altman looks up at the knock on her door. “Come in.”

Jackson Avery hovers at the door, unwilling to walk in any further and take a seat until he’s been invited.

Teddy frowns and gestures for him to come forward and have a seat. She leans back in her chair and steeples her fingers underneath her chin. It’s never a good sign when the ADA comes to her office before reasonable people have even had coffee. “What can I do for you?”

“I have a detective that wants to pin O’Malley’s death on Addison Montgomery.”

She feels her eyebrows rise involuntarily. “That’s a hell of an accusation to make. Does this detective of yours have any evidence?” She’s willing to help out Avery; he’s new to the bar and even newer to the city, she’s not even sure the shine on the nametag on his door has worn off yet. He’s still finding his footing with the law.

“He has a hunch and a couple of bystanders who are willing to put someone matching Montgomery’s description at the shootout.”

“I’ve been expecting you to show up here with something like this. But, honestly, I expected it to be about Hunt. He was the star witness in your case.” She doesn’t need to tell Avery that a hunch – no matter how healthy – and eyewitnesses who saw a tall woman with red hair aren’t nearly enough to hang a hat on, not to mention a murder conviction.

“Even less evidence there,” he admits, “though the entire city is convinced she did it.”

Teddy scoffs. “Of course she did it. Maybe not her, but one of her goons took care of it. He was going to nail her to the cross. New York City couldn’t even manage that.”

Jackson doesn’t point out that the only reason Montgomery isn’t currently cooling her heels in a prison cell some place in upstate New York is because the jury came back with a baffling not guilty verdict and at least half the jurors went on vacations after the case that they couldn’t afford before. He knows that Altman would’ve learned from New York’s mistakes and sequestered the jury with round-the-clock muscle of her own. “So it’s a _no_ on O’Malley then.”

“You know better than that. Get some real evidence. Robbins pulled a bullet out of him, right? Find the gun, find her fingerprints. And Montgomery wouldn’t do it herself, she’d get Sloan or Karev to do it.” She smiles at Avery, who desperately looks like he wants to be taking notes. “Now get out of my office,” she grins.

* * *

  
Despite the mild headache reminding him of last night, Burke can’t help but laugh when Duquette joins him in the elevator. “Really,” he says, catching his breath, “how are you not dead?”

Denny simply shakes his head and readjusts his sling holding his shoulder steady. “If the city gave out hazard pay, you’d wish you were me.”

“Is this where I point out that it doesn’t and I don’t?” Burke steps forward and slides the grated doors open, knowing that Duquette probably can’t manage with just one arm, and moves aside to let the other man go first.

“Oh,” Erica says, catching sight of her colleagues, “you’ll intimidate them now, that’s for sure.”

“Go to hell, both of you,” Denny says with a grin.

After a few minutes of silent working, the door to Webber’s office slams open.

“I was assaulted by one of your detectives last night, Chief Webber. And if you’re not going to do anything about that, I certainly will have to take things into my own hands.”

“That is not a recommended course of action, Miss Grey.”

Burke’s ears perk up at the mention of the name. He frowns, realizing that it isn’t Shepherd’s girlfriend, Meredith. He’d heard something about a half-sister once, though Grey’s a fairly common enough name.

Grey turns to stalk out, but pauses and nearly trips on the missed half-step. “That’s him,” she points firmly at Duquette.

Denny blinks. “I got shot last night by your john, Lexie. I could’ve collared both of you right then.”

Burke looks over at Hahn, trying her best to turn a stifled laugh into a cough. She catches Burke watching her and mouths _only him_ and Burke nods, agreeing. Duquette may be a good cop, but the man’s jacket is at least half an inch thick with unfounded complaints. One of these days, someone’s going to have a legitimate complaint the force ignores and actually take it into their own hands.

“Miss Grey,” Webber says politely, “perhaps you’d like to rethink your position.”

“Oh, of course! You take _his_ side in the matter. I was just minding my own business, when he kicks down my door – which you will be paying for, by the way – and waves his gun at me and my boyfriend and suggest that we stop what we’re doing.”

The boyfriend line is clearly a lie. She’s dyed her hair and gained some weight since she was last here, but with the shouting everyone in the room recognizes her as Lexie Grey. Most of the room has had the displeasure of cuffing her for prostitution at one point or another.

Burke tunes out the rest of the argument. It’s going to end with Webber escorting Lexie out of the building with a stern warning to calm down and get her story straight before coming back. Besides, he has a lead to follow.

* * *

  
“Look,” Cooper says, standing firmly in the doorway to his apartment, blocking Burke’s entrance and most of his view, “I’m not going to tell you anything.” He’s leaving the city in three days and leaving Montgomery and that entire mess behind; she’s letting him go without so much as a dirty look or a promise that she’ll look him up if she’s ever in the area. He has no desire to say or do anything to jeopardize him getting out of town on her good side and out of her debt.

Burke peers over Freedman’s shoulder and sees moving boxes piled in corners. “Leaving town?”

“Yeah. Couple days. I’m starting a job with the LA Times.” He figures it’s in his best interests to be honest, even if it is to the detective who’s investigating his former boss.

Burke knows that Freedman’s small potatoes at best and has probably never done anything illegal in his life. Every transaction with Montgomery has been above-table and legitimate. But he’s also leaving town in a few days and, because he’s one of Montgomery’s few associates who hasn’t been wanted for one crime or another, he’s probably Burke’s best shot at getting some inside information. “Mr. Freedman…”

“Detective, I have to pack. If you’ll excuse me.” Cooper shuts the door and presses his ear to it, waiting to hear the detective leave and walk back down the stairs.

His phone rings. “Yeah?” He answers.

 _“You tell him anything?”_ Wilder’s voice comes through, slightly staticky.

Cooper pushes back the curtains to look outside, down at the street. He sees a man in a hat and dark overcoat huddled by the pay phone on the corner. “No. Nothing to tell – he just wanted to talk, didn’t say about what. Montgomery have you tail him?”

 _“Yeah. Look, depending on how long this takes, I’m gonna be a bit longer getting to LA.”_

“You’ll owe me for rent.”

 _“That’s fine. Gotta go.”_

* * *

  
Burke twirls his pen and stares at the table. He’s taken over one of the interrogation rooms and laid everything out on the table. Pictures connected with bits of string and scribbled notes; he’d prefer a bulletin board or taping things to the wall, but the Chief is dead against having case information in public view of anyone who walks into the precinct office. Burke supposes the man has a point, but it sure makes complicated messes like this one difficult.

He tilts his head and reaches for his coffee cup, only to discover that it’s empty.

There’s really nothing here. He can connect people with Montgomery, but people aren’t worth anything. Every crime O’Malley had listed her as a suspect for is just out of reach of her; two points away at least, if not more. The closest is an arson case from last year where the top suspect is Alex Karev himself, based on recorded telephone conversations O’Malley didn’t have a warrant for and as such Judge Wallace wouldn’t allow the evidence in court; he threw out the case a day later when he realized the ADA didn’t have anything else to present. Burke smiles wryly; after that, Naomi Bennett refused to work with O’Malley on anything, citing gross incompetence, and had handed everything to do with Addison Montgomery over to Jackson Avery. He’d enjoyed working with her on a few cases, though he’d always suspected her reluctance to work with O’Malley had less to do with him and more with prosecuting Montgomery than she let on.

He pauses in his musings and blinks. “Wait,” he says to himself. “Why would Bennett care about trying Montgomery?” He picks his way around the piles of paper on the floor until he finds the one he labeled NEW YORK. He lifts it onto a chair, squats, and flips through it until he finds what he’s looking for.

A picture of five people crowded into a booth, clearly a celebration of some sort. He easily picks out Montgomery, Shepherd, Sloan and Bennett, but doesn’t recognize the other man. He flips it over.

 _Addison, Derek, Mark, Sam and Naomi. Addison’s birthday, ’31._

He blinks again, wracking his brain for Sam. He studies the picture again. Sam has his arm around Naomi and if Burke squints, he can make out a ring on the appropriate fingers of both of them.

With energy he didn’t have five minutes ago, he bursts back into the main room. “Anyone know anything about a Sam Bennett?”

Erica looks up from the wiretap transcript she’d been reading. “Sounds familiar. Isn’t he the guy who got himself shot in Portland?”

“Rumor had it Montgomery put him in charge there after the original guy kicked it with a heart attack,” Denny clarifies as best he knows. He pops a painkiller, his shoulder beginning to throb.

“Why, you got something interesting?”

Burke shakes his head. A mental picture is beginning to form, but the details are still fuzzy. “Maybe. I have to go talk to some people.” He ducks back into the interrogation room and grabs a couple of pictures before locking the door, picking his hat and coat up from his desk, and leaving the precinct.

* * *

  
Addison cracks her neck and looks at her lunch companion. “How scared are they?”

Callie shrugs noncommittally. She’s had to calm more than one set of nerves over the past nights, but for the most part the girls seem to assume that they’re safe because of their employer. “They’re getting there. I mean, so far none of them have been ours, which is helping. But I think if one more turns up dead, we’re going to have to give them some muscle or they’re gonna stay inside at night.”

“Damn,” Addison curses. She swirls her martini, watching the patterns the light makes through the clear liquid onto the smooth, dark wood table. “If he even goes near one of our girls, it’s war. You know that.”

Callie’s eyebrows furrow and she brushes a finger against the condensation on her gin and tonic. “Do you know who it is?”

Addison shakes her head. She doesn’t even have a hunch, which is strange for her; Seattle is her town and every bit of crime that happens either happens at her bidding or she knows who’s responsible. Except for this. “Seven dead girls.” Even though none of them are hers – so far – she can’t help but be angry at the monster. “Son of a bitch.”

“Amen,” Callie says. “We could always go full-on escort.”

“This guy’s smart,” Addison says. She knows that the cops aren’t giving everything to the papers, but she also knows that if he even left a shred of evidence, Robbins would’ve found it. “If we take everyone off the street, he’ll just call up.”

They go silent for a moment while their waitress brings them their lunches.

“Thank you, Miranda,” Addison says, dismissing the short woman with a smile and a nod.

“We’d know who he is.”

Addison looks at Callie skeptically. “When was the last time you met a john who used his real name?”

Callie stifles a yawn; her own days of standing on a street corner are long over, but she still stays up until she’s certain all of them are safe and home again. It’s a habit Arizona would prefer she get rid of, but lately she’s been staying up with Callie. “Never.”

* * *

  
Burke spends the entire walk to the Archfield deep in thought. ADA Naomi Bennett is the only one in the picture from New York not somehow involved in Addison’s business. Except Shepherd, but Burke believed Shepherd the first time they spoke about Montgomery: he’d walked in on his wife and his best friend, Mark Sloan, in the midst of making love in Shepherd’s own bed and he’d just walked out, too betrayed to deal with either of them ever again. Burke doubts that Shepherd has any contact with Montgomery at all.

But Bennett. Granted, O’Malley had bungled the arson case which they’d planned to use later in a mounting pile of evidence against Montgomery and her entire organization. But that’s not reason enough to throw the entire case to a new guy, just three years out of Harvard Law; Avery may be a brilliant prosecutor, but Burke doubts there’s anyone in the city who believes Avery can take Montgomery down. He’d been close, once O’Malley had convinced Hunt to talk, but that had been less his work and more O’Malley’s. And now both O’Malley and Hunt are dead and Avery has no case. Bennett could probably take one look at the mess Burke has created in the interrogation room and make a neat little story out of it.

He wonders, yet again, what prompted her to hand off the case. She’d struck him as a reasonable woman, one who had been scorned in life and love like everyone else in town, but one who doesn’t give up easily. He’d always sensed that there was something about the Montgomery case that bothered her and today, finding the picture of them clearly as friends, slides that puzzle piece into place.

Now all he has to do is figure out if her reluctance was because of their previous friendship, or if Bennett’s really working both sides. He hopes it’s the former, because he can’t think of any reason for the latter.

Burke pushes open the door to the Archfield and smiles at the hostess, telling her it’ll be just him for lunch. He scans the room and sees only a few occupied tables. He thinks the corner booth in the back might be occupied, but it’s dim that far back and he can’t tell if it’s shadows, his eyes playing tricks on him, or two women quietly talking.

He’s led to a booth on the side and sits facing the door. He smiles politely while the hostess lists off the lunch specials and then is left on his own to study the menu. By the time his waitress comes by, he’s ready to order.

“Miranda,” Burke smiles politely; he’d hoped to be seated in her section.

“Burke,” she says, careful not to use his title. The Archfield has its own rules, different from Ambrose’s; first and foremost is to hide the identities of patrons as much as possible. “What can I get for you today?”

Burke’s eyes settle on the way she’s holding her pen, shaking a little, and writes it off to nervousness at meeting a customer from a different restaurant in this one. “I’ll have the soup. And a club sandwich. And when you come back, I have a few questions.”

Miranda smiles sweetly. “Of course. Iced tea to drink? Wedge of lemon, unsweetened?”

“Of course. Thank you.”

He waits patiently for her to return with his drink. She does, almost immediately, and he smiles. “Have you ever seen this woman in here?” He pushes a picture of Naomi Bennett, cut from the newspaper, toward her. It’s clipped to two twenty dollar bills.

Miranda pockets the money and picks up the picture. “Maybe,” she says hesitantly. Feeling the weight of Burke’s forty dollars in her apron pocket, she smiles at him. “Let me check in the kitchen with the others. They might have seen her.”

He smiles widely. “Thank you.”

It’s not two minutes before she pokes her head out of the kitchen and motions for him to come forward. He stands up, slightly unsure of the protocol. He’s bought information at the Archfield before, but his waiter or waitress has always had the information at their fingertips, or sent someone over who did. He’s never been asked somewhere private before. On guard, he walks across the room, careful to catalog the other patrons as he walks by. He notices that the corner booth he’d thought occupied earlier is now definitely empty. “Yes?”

Miranda pushes the door open with her hip. “Dell Parker,” she gestures further into the kitchen, “he’s the cook. Says she came in once and had some issues with the food, so he came out to talk to her. Go ahead, it’s okay.”

Burke takes one last look behind him and steps inside the kitchen. It’s hot and there’s far more activity than he thought possible for such an empty restaurant outside. Miranda ushers him to the back where a young blonde man in a chef’s hat is frowning at a sauce pot.

He opens his mouth to ask Parker about Bennett, but a hand firm on his shoulder silences him.

“Detective Burke,” a deep voice from behind greets him.

Burke turns around, suddenly aware that this may not have been his greatest plan. He hopes that Cristina remembers that they had plans to get together after work and that she’ll have the presence of mind to contact his colleagues when he doesn’t meet her at the bar. Whether his colleagues will put together where he went and what he asked about is another story entirely. “Miranda,” he says, disappointed.

She shrugs and crosses her arms. “You should know better.”

Burke looks up and finds himself face to face with Mark Sloan. He notices Alex Karev behind him and tries to swallow inconspicuously.

A click of heel on tile makes him close his eyes. Absolutely his worst plan ever.

“Detective Burke,” Addison Montgomery’s sultry voice sails smoothly over the sounds of kitchen chaos. “Let’s talk. Somewhere a little more private. Boys?”

The last thing Burke sees is Mark’s fist flying toward his face.


	4. angels with dirty faces

Denny squats next to the sheet-covered body on the bed. With a deep breath, knowing and not liking what he’s going to find, he lifts a corner of the sheet. “Ugh,” he scrunches up his nose. He could smell it from the hallway, but it’s even worse under the sheet. He drops the white fabric down again and stands up. “That’s definitely April. How long’s she been dead?”

Arizona looks up from her clipboard, snaps her gum and offers Denny a piece from the pack in her pocket. “I’d say about a week. How long’s she been missing?”

Denny takes a piece of the peppermint gum. It helps. “She hasn’t; no one called it in. Neighbor called the super about the smell.” He casts his eyes to the crowd that’s gathered in the hallway. “How’d she die?” Her body’s so bloated and discolored, that he can’t tell.

“Looks like strangulation. I don’t know how, but,” she jerks her thumb toward the nightstand where a single nylon stocking lies over the lamp, “that’s my guess.”

Exhaling sharply, he picks up the nylon. “Different from the others,” he murmurs, mostly to himself.

“Looks like she fought back,” Arizona says, pointing to blood underneath April’s fingernails, “and one of your guys found the knife by the door.” She shrugs.

Denny chuckles to himself. “April would fight back. Too bad she runs without a pimp, we could find out who she was with the few nights before she died.”

“Who the hell freelances in this town?” Sensing that Denny’s about to blame himself for not doing more, Arizona puts her clipboard down on the nightstand and reaches across the twin bed to put a hand on his arm. “Look. You’ve got nothing on this guy and it’s not for lack of trying. Whoever he is, he’s good. This is not your fault.”

Denny offers her a smile before pulling his arm away. “Yeah.”

* * *

  
“Enough.”

Burke tests his jaw and squints up at Mark cracking his knuckles as he steps aside. He’s lost track of how long he’s been in this room, but he suspects it’s only a few hours though it feels like much longer. The legs of the chair he’s tied to are uneven and the hideous yellow tile on the floor makes him want to vomit, though that may just be the pain.

Addison walks into view. “Sorry about all this,” she says, not sounding apologetic at all.

He spits blood onto the floor. It barely misses her shoe.

With a scornful look at the blood on the floor, Addison takes a step to the side. “Don’t blame Miranda. She was just doing what I asked of her. Her son is attending the city’s best preschool, did she tell you that?” At his silence, Addison smiles. “No, of course not. You’d start wondering how she could afford that and, well, that’s just impolite among friends.”

“Why am I here?” Burke asks, though he has his suspicions.

She straightens. “You were asking about Naomi Bennett. Miranda said you gave her forty dollars for the potential tip. I know what a detective makes, Burke. You had to think you were going to get something good to drop that kind of cash. Why would a detective with such respect for the law and the order it brings be asking about the assistant district attorney in a place like the Archfield?”

Burke figures he doesn’t have anything to lose by telling the truth. “Thought she was connected to you.” If he’s right, he’ll have another piece to fit with the others. If he’s wrong, well, he’ll have some great bruises and cuts to show off to Duquette.

Addison laughs a full-throated, hearty laugh. It echoes off the concrete walls. “Naomi Bennett having anything to do with me. That’s perfect.”

Mark and Alex laugh with her, though aren’t quite as amused as she is.

“I really ought to put forty dollars back in your pocket because that,” she gestures aimlessly, “is truly the funniest thing I’ve heard in a while. And I own a comedy club.” She calms and her face molds into a mask of severity in an instant. “No, Detective Burke. Naomi Bennett is not at all working for me. In fact, I think she might get more gratification out of seeing me behind bars than your Chief Webber.”

“Then why did she give your case to Avery?” Burke can’t help the question; it slips out of his mouth before he has a chance to grab onto it. He blames delusion from the pain.

Addison snorts. “She didn’t _give_ it to Avery, Altman and Wallace forced her off the case. O’Malley had just linked her to me back in New York, dug up some dirt on us being friends. Your judges thought it would be a conflict of interest. Believe me, Burke. This,” she gestures to him tied up in the chair, “could’ve been avoided if you’d done your homework.” She steps aside and nods to Mark.

He cracks his knuckles.

* * *

  
Denny frowns at the spread of photos and case details in front of him. None of it makes sense, none of it matches up. He closes his eyes and leans as far back in his chair as he dares. He’s worked hard cases before, they all have, but there’s always _something_ to tie it all together; a common thread, a clue left behind, a witness.

He looks at the first case file again: Sydney Heron. At the scene, they’d all assumed it was a suicide; the cuts on her wrist and position in the tub fit the profile, and everyone they’d talked to said she’d seemed kind of down lately. But Robbins had shook her head and pointed out strangulation marks around Heron’s neck, barely visible against the purple and bloated skin, and later showed him x-rays displaying broken bones in the woman’s neck.

He frowns at the file. Strangulation can be a first time method of killing, but it’s awfully personal. So is positioning the body.

Denny flips to a more recent case, Sadie Harris. She wasn’t the first girl to have her throat slit – that dubious honor went to Olivia Harper, the third girl to die – but she is the reason they’ve decided not to release the common cause of death to the press. As the fifth to die, and the third to do so bleeding from the jugular, they officially named it a pattern.

The last thing they need is for every girl and pimp in the city to start packing heat and aiming it at every john who looks like he might have a knife in his back pocket.

* * *

  
Burke squints through his left eye – the right one swollen shut – and manages to focus on the clock on the wall. 11:37. He’s not sure if that’s morning or night, or even how many 11:37s have passed since he’s been here.

Heels click on the tile floor.

“Don’t pretend to be asleep, Burke,” Montgomery’s sultry voice wafts through the dimly-lit room as she walks out of the shadows; light from the room’s single lamp glints off her red hair. “I liked O’Malley,” she says, curling her fingers around the back of a chair hidden in the corner. She sets the chair in front of him, demurely crossing her legs. “He wasn’t all that savvy until the very end, and that was only because Hunt got involved. God rest their souls,” she says unconvincingly.

“Here’s the deal,” she says, resting her arm on the back of the chair. “You’re going to back off and keep your nose in your own business. You’re going to report to Webber that you can’t find anything. And you’re going to go back to investigating petty larceny and the occasional arson. Because, Preston,” his name rolls off her tongue like whiskey, “we have eyes on your girl.”

“Leave her out of this!” Burke manages to spit out. Everything hurts.

Addison merely chuckles and stands up, smoothing her skirt out as she steps closer to Burke. “Sweet dreams,” she whispers, pressing a damp cloth over his mouth and nose.

* * *

  
Burke wakes up as he hits the ground, rolling a few feet until he stops. He blinks against the bright light and hears a car speed off, tires squealing against the pavement. He squints upward and the lights of the hospital come into focus. It’s night.

“Burke?” Shepherd’s voice echoes loudly from the alley behind him. He quickly checks Burke for immediate injuries and then helps him stagger upward, placing a supporting arm around Burke’s waist as he helps the other man inside to the ER. “What the hell happened to you?”

Groaning, Burke settles onto the cot and lies back down. He watches as Shepherd washes blood off his hands and gloves up. “Montgomery,” he says. “What day is it?”

“Tuesday,” Derek says. “Well, Wednesday now. Lie still.”

Burke tries to be quiet while Shepherd cleans up his injuries, but things hurt too much to avoid letting out a hiss once in a while. At least he’s only been gone a day. “Have I missed anything?” He asks, knowing full well that Shepherd probably can’t tell him what he wants to know.

“It’s nothing serious,” Shepherd says, having checked all of Burke’s injuries, “but you’re gonna hurt bad for a few days.” He turns to collect a needle and thread to start suturing a particularly nasty cut over Burke’s eye. “There’s another dead girl,” he says, “hold still. April something.”

“Kepner?” Burke keeps his eyes closed despite his urge to look. He knows better than to try to watch while someone’s sewing his face back together.

“Yeah, that’s it.”

He’s not glad she’s gone, but it is one less pain in the ass he has to deal with. “How’d she die?”

“Strangled. _Hold still_.”

“Bastard,” Burke says, though any bite behind the curse is defeated by Shepherd pulling tightly on the sutures.

“Yeah. You guys gonna knock this off or what?” Shepherd pats Burke on the shoulder. “All done.”

Burke sits up and gingerly pulls off his shirt so Shepherd can get a look and see if any ribs are broken. “We’re trying.”

* * *

  
“Where the hell have you been?” Cristina accuses the moment her apartment door opens, her hand poised on her hip. She’s used to being stood up, but not by Burke. She’d left the restaurant after sitting alone, waiting for an hour; she spent the next day grumbling at customers. She opens her mouth to yell even further, but he steps into the apartment enough that the lamplight brings his injuries into sharp focus and she gasps. “What happened to you?”

Burke cautiously steps completely into her apartment, shutting and locking the door behind him. He hasn’t yet taken any of the painkillers Shepherd gave him for fear that they’d turn him completely fuzzy and unable to get here, or at least unable to defend himself should the man who’s been tailing him for the past few days get any ideas to take advantage of him. Things are starting to hurt. Badly. He hesitates for a moment, on the verge of telling Cristina exactly what happened to him and who’s responsible for it, but Addison’s warning echoes in his mind and he decides against it. The less Cristina knows, the safer she’ll be. “Misunderstanding with a suspect,” he says. It’s close enough to the truth.

Cristina scoffs, not believing him for a moment. It could very well be a misunderstanding with a suspect, but no way does simple confusion with an average criminal result in the battered, bruised and bloody body she sees in front of her. Shepherd cleaned him up well enough to stitch him back together, but Burke’s in need of a hot bath, the drugs he has in his pocket, and a meal. Not necessarily in that order.

“Come on,” she gestures, leading him into the bathroom. She starts a bath, making sure the water’s just this side of scalding hot, and motions that he should peel off his clothes and drop them in the corner. “In,” she says once the tub is full and he’s standing in front of her.

Gingerly, Burke lowers himself into the tub. Steam rises from the water’s surface and he hisses as his cuts protest against being submerged. He closes his eyes and rests his head against the wall. He’ll start trying to clean himself in a moment, but for now he just wants to forget that the last twenty-four hours ever happened. Hearing movement, he opens one eye just in time to catch Cristina gathering up his discarded clothing and disappearing out the bathroom door. He exhales sharply, winces, and slides deeper into the tub until his back is against the bottom and his head is fully under water. He comes up only when he needs air.

Cristina sets the contents of his pants and jacket pockets – keys, wallet, spare change, bottle of painkillers, receipt from the Archfield – on the kitchen table and dumps every article of clothing except his shoes into the trash. Everything’s probably salvageable, but bloodstains are a bitch to get out and she’s not at all interested in trying. He has a spare set of clothing at her place anyway.

She pours a finger of scotch into a glass and finishes it in two swallows. Luckily, there’s food in her apartment and she quickly pulls together a sandwich for him. Dropping two pills onto the plate, she carries it and another glass of scotch into the bathroom for him.

She hopes he’s not too injured. Giving him a bath is not something that’s on her girlfriend résumé.

* * *

  
“You look like shit.”

“Thank you, Erica,” Burke says, mustering as much sincerity as he can. He’s nursing two broken ribs, a dislocated shoulder, and a black eye and knows that he’d be well within his rights to call up the Chief and take the day off, but he’d go stir crazy in his apartment all day and Cristina won’t let him near the bar during business hours. He’d report the assault, if all three of them wouldn’t have convenient alibis.

They step out of the elevator and Burke carefully makes his way to his desk to drop off his coat and hat before getting a cup of coffee. Shepherd said he could remove the sling in two days and for now he has to do things one-handed.

“This is my area of expertise,” Denny jokes, taking over and pouring a cup of fresh coffee for Burke. He’s been on the phone since four in the morning, cold calling precincts across the country – starting with the East Coast, trying to get detectives on the line before they get too busy in other things for the day – for any information or cases similar to his. It’s the third pot of coffee he’s made today.

Burke chuckles. “I won’t make a habit of it. Anything new?”

Denny sighs and shakes his head. “Latest victim is April Kepner. Strangled.” He holds up a plastic bag. “Robbins thinks she fought back, made him drop the knife. Left it there, but it’s clean.”

Burke exhales sharply; in the haze of painkillers, he’d forgotten that Shepherd had told him about April. He hadn’t known any of the other victims personally, but he’d certainly spent enough time listening to Kepner’s antagonizing taunts in the past few months. “And there are no leads on this guy,” he muses.

“Brick walls, mostly. You run into anything in your New York research that might help with this?”

“I thought we said they weren’t connected to Montgomery.”

“I’ve got nothing. I’ll take a healthy hunch at this point.”

“Let me check.”

Coffee steadily in hand, Burke settles in at his desk. The Chief took all his other cases away from him, so Montgomery is the only thing he has to work on. But he has several painful reminders of her and would rather not sink into her file first thing in the morning. He digs the bottle of painkillers out of his coat pocket and pops open the cap. He tips the bottle and two white pills fall onto his desk. A rare beam of sunlight shines on the label, highlighting _Shepherd_ written on the prescription.

He blinks at it.

Chasing the pills with a swig of coffee, he stands up and gestures for Duquette to follow him into the small interview room, still covered in neatly-organized piles.

“New York had a similar problem,” Burke says, holding up a finger as he thinks once Duquette has shut the door behind them. “Dead prostitutes, nothing linking them together, most of them strangled or with their throats slit. Shepherd’s kid sister, Amelia, was the detective on the case. Her notes are…” he trails off, remembering, “there,” he points at a pile.

Denny nods. “Let’s get started.”

* * *

  
Addison visibly clenches her jaw as she kneels down next to the body, settling her weight in her heels. She catches her dress with one hand so it doesn’t trail in the pool of congealing blood; her shoes are a lost cause, but her entire outfit doesn’t have to be. “Her john checks out?” She looks up at Alex.

He nods. “Hungover as a sailor on leave. No way he did this.”

She exhales sharply and reaches out, gently closing the eyelids of the dead woman. She’s dealt with enough cops to know she’s going to get an earful for trekking through the blood and generally touching things, but she also knows they wouldn’t be stupid enough to try to blame this on her.

She wouldn’t kill one of her own.

After ensuring there isn’t any blood on her hands, she braces her palms against her knees and stands up.

“Let’s take a trip downtown.”

* * *

  
“Richard.”

The silky smooth voice causes Webber to slowly look up from the report currently open on his desk. The sun’s just about to set, peeking through the ineffective blinds covering the windows in his stuffy office. Dust particles float through the slotted shadows and he blinks several times to clear his vision, hoping the woman standing in his office door is just a hallucination.

She isn’t.

“Ms. Montgomery,” he says evenly, his face a mask of stony calm. One doesn’t make it to the rank of Police Chief without knowing how to cover one’s true feelings. In the case of Webber, confusion and near panic.

“Please,” she says, voice carrying a sultry air to it as she slides into his office, shutting the door behind her, and taking a seat in the uncomfortable chair facing him, “call me Addison.”

Webber leans back in his chair, leather creaking in protest against the motion, and steeples his fingers underneath his chin. “I’d prefer Ms. Montgomery if you don’t mind.” He doesn’t care if she does mind; he is not on a first-name basis with her no matter what she might like to think. If he weren’t concerned that it might land him in the Sound with his feet encased in concrete, he’d insist that she address him by his title. “What can the Seattle Police Department do for you this fine afternoon?”

Addison crosses her legs and settles her purse on her lap. “One of my girls is dead. Violet Turner. I took the liberty of informing Detective Duquette and Doctor Robbins. I believe they’re on their way to her apartment now.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

“Richard, you know better than anyone that I know everything that happens in this town. But I don’t know who this man is. My girls were scared before, they are terrified now. He needs to be caught.”

“Ms. Montgomery, I assure you. We’re working –”

“Not hard enough,” she silences his empty platitudes.

Her face is half-cast in shadow but Webber can tell that she’s furious, more than her tone lets on. “Ms. Montgomery, you may think that yours is the only…business of consequence in this city.” He opens his mouth to say more, but the way she leans forward in her chair causes him to silence. For once in his life, he isn’t distracted by the obvious cleavage in front of him.

“I’ll repeat, because this does not seem to sink in with you or your detectives outside. _I don’t know who this monster is_. That alone should terrify you.” She leans back and stands up and if there was a threat hidden in her words, it’s gone now. “If I can be of any assistance, please let me know.”

Webber nods. “Of course.” He doubts very much he will need her assistance, and his detectives already know that if they use her in any way that it had better not make it into an official report.

* * *

  
“Okay people, listen up,” Webber says, silencing the murmurs in his precinct. He knows everyone in the room knows of the most recent death and what it means. He also knows that they’re all gossiping about what it meant to have Addison Montgomery in his office. Even Burke. Webber hadn’t missed the way Sloan had smiled at Burke on his way out; if the detective doesn’t want to press charges, that’s his business.

“Is it true?”

Webber controls his urge to roll his eyes. At this point, he’s sure that the news that one of Montgomery’s girls is the newest dead has transformed into something only marginally resembling the truth.

He’s unwilling to give anyone the indication that what he’s about to say has anything to do with Montgomery herself. “As of this morning, he’s up to nine. That is nine dead women in the past three months. You are all pulled from whatever cases you are currently working on. If it’s not going to trial, put it aside. We need all hands on deck for this. We are not letting him get to double digits.”


	5. bordertown

Cristina scoffs as the bar erupts into chaos. “Oh, for cryin’ out loud,” she groans. She hates boxing and hates the way people get when a match doesn’t go their way. It’s worse than baseball. Ceferino Garcia just knocked out Fred Apostoli in seven rounds, winning the world middleweight title and making a quarter of the room very happy and the rest very, very broke.

As a glass breaks somewhere in the corner, she shakes her head and looks up at the ceiling. It’s times like these she wishes Emerald City had a security team that consisted of more than just her, the busboy, and a couple of baseball bats. She ducks as a chair flies over her head to crash into the bottles and glasses behind her.

At least the outcome doesn’t change how much she’s getting paid tonight. Cristina punches a young kid trying to vault over the bar, not caring that he’s probably just trying to hide. Altman takes the same amount for all bets, regardless of who actually wins, and passes a percentage on to Cristina. Because of the stakes of the fight, she’s going home with enough money to pay rent for the next year.

Amid the crashing of glass, sickening thud of fists into soft body parts, and general yelling, she makes out Shepherd doing a damn good job of not getting hit at the end of the bar. She doesn’t particularly like the guy; something about his attitude never sits right with her, not to mention his hair. But he’s great at patching up Burke so she puts up with his occasional presence at the bar and the annoying girlfriend that sometimes comes with him.

“These guys,” he gestures to the chaos in the room, “are gonna need me in an hour,” he observes once Cristina fends off a few more goons looking for breakable ammunition behind the bar.

“Go,” she says, knowing the hospital will need him in one piece, “drinks are on me.”

* * *

  
“Tyler!”

With a sigh, the beat cop stops and turns toward the sound of his name. “Reed,” he says flatly, not at all pleased to see his ex-girlfriend jogging to catch up with him. Rumor has it that she’s now editing the crime desk at the Times and her interest in talking to him can’t be anything good.

“Is it true? One of Montgomery’s girls got killed? And the Chief’s pulled all of you to work on it?” Before she’s even caught up with him, Reed has her notebook and pencil out.

“Why don’t you read your own newspaper, Adamson?” He glares at the paper boy on the corner, dumping an entire stack of the next day’s papers in the garbage; reading upside down, Tyler catches _Apostoli Champion Again!_ in the headline in the trash. He sighs: he’s out five dollars.

A crash echoes halfway down the street and fighting sprawls out on the sidewalk. Tyler rolls his eyes. He’ll be at the station, booking all of them for assault, long after Ambrose’s has stopped serving breakfast. He gestures for the kid to take his papers and run on home. “Come back when the sun’s up,” he advises.

Reed sighs, posture slouching, and ignores the brawl behind her. “Come on, Tyler. Throw me a bone here. None of the precinct guys are talking and getting within shouting distance of Burke and Duquette is impossible. My editor’s on me to run this story and all I got from Dandridge is that a Violet Turner showed up on his boss’ slab with her throat slit. Percy tells me that Turner was one of Montgomery’s girls and lunch gossip at Ambrose’s is that Webber has everyone working on the Ripper case.”

Tyler blinks at the nickname for the murderer, wondering how internal police designations made it into the public, but recovers quickly. “Sounds like you’ve got it all figured out.” A car squeals around the corner with a peal of a siren and stops just short of the fight; four cops tumble out and begin making order out of chaos. Satisfied that he won’t have to deal with that, at least until his shift is over and they need someone to take statements, Tyler glances over his shoulder, anxious to get back to work. They may have a violent murderer and bar brawls on their hands, but someone still needs to make sure the rest of the city doesn’t fall apart.

“Please? I can’t run this without a source. You guys got anything?”

“Nothing I can tell you, Reed.”

With a huff, Reed flips her notebook closed and stuffs it back in her bag along with the pencil. “Yeah. You’ve got nothin’ on this guy.”

“That’s not what I said.”

“I’m not a moron, Tyler. I’ve been working around cops for years. I’ve broken your secret code. Get back to work.” She turns on her heel and walks off into the rainy night.

Tyler stands and watches her. He has half a mind to shout after her, tell her to wait and that he’ll walk her home, but he knows that she can take care of herself and that she’d probably kick him if she thought he was suggesting otherwise. He sighs, partly because things always end this way between them now and partly because she’s right. He doesn’t even have to do any of the dirty work, doesn’t have to see the bodies or read reports or talk to potential witnesses. All he has to do is walk the now-empty streets at night and remind any stray single women that it’d be in their best interests to get inside. He waits until she’s disappeared into the shadows before resuming his course.

He turns, movement at the edge of his vision catching his attention. A man walks out of the alleyway across the street and rushes in the direction Tyler was headed. The man vanishes before Tyler can get a good look at him, melting into the shadows and darkness afforded by a burned-out gaslight and a new moon. Tyler jogs across the street, hoping that it was just another drunk needing a piss. An unsettling feeling in the bottom of his stomach tells him that it wasn’t.

“Oh my God,” he says. The gaslight at the opposite end of the alley provides just enough light to illuminate the features of a dead woman on the ground, her throat slit from ear to ear. Blood shimmers on the cobblestones below, one of the few places in the city that hasn’t succumb yet to modernized roads. Tyler gags and steps out of the alley. He looks up and down the street.

It’s deserted.

* * *

  
Callie exhales sharply and runs her fingers through her hair. “You want to eat, Grey? Then you work.”

Meredith crosses her arms and leans angrily against the doorframe. “You gonna promise me I’m not gonna end up dead?”

“You really think you’re the first girl to walk in here and ask me that?” Callie lifts an eyebrow in disbelief. Meredith is, at minimum, the sixth girl today to ask Callie to make that promise. She’s tired of hearing it. “Can the attitude, Grey. We’re not paying you to stay inside.”

“I’m not the only one who’s thinking of picking up a waitress pad until this guy is found, Callie. Any time Addison wants to give us some actual muscle instead of Stark and Marlowe, we’ll shut up and do our jobs. Those two guys couldn’t hold off a drunk monkey.”

Callie snorts. It’s true, but they’re the only spare guys right now; Addison has everyone else busy either doing normal work or trying to do what the cops aren’t. “Okay, fine. You’re stuck with Stark, but you pair up with Rose.”

Meredith frowns and taps her cigarette into the ashtray on the bookshelf. “I don’t do that.”

“Fine,” Callie says nonchalantly, leaning back in the worn suede armchair, “work solo.”

With a disdainful look, Meredith stabs out her cigarette and storms out the door.

* * *

  
“Look, Addison. I don’t know what to tell you.” Arizona brushes her arm across her forehead, wiping away beads of sweat; despite being refrigerated, the morgue always gets too hot. “I can’t find anything.” She looks down at the table in front of her and the body on top of it.

Lexie Grey, perpetual pain in the ass of every cop in the district.

And now very, very dead.

Addison exhales sharply. Lexie wasn’t one of hers, but her sister is. As soon as she heard, she’d dispatched Alex to break the news to Meredith. By her count, they have maybe two minutes before Meredith breaks down the door to the morgue.

“She’s my sister, Alex!”

Addison looks at the clock on the wall, frowns, and then glances at her watch. It must be slow. She makes a mental note to fix it later and steels herself for the emotional tornado that is Meredith Grey having a very bad day. At least she didn’t bring the boyfriend. The last thing Addison needs right now is to run into her ex-husband. Addison opens the door to save both Meredith’s tiny fists and the wood. “Meredith, I’m so sorry,” she says. It’s halfway sincere. Addison never liked Lexie, but Meredith’s always good for business.

Meredith brushes past Addison’s concern to see Lexie lying on the table. Arizona’s cleaned her up and done her the decency of pulling a sheet over Lexie’s body, but it’s still her sister on the table, dead, with her throat slit. Meredith hadn’t believed Alex when he told her that Lexie was dead; he had no reason to lie to her – and he’s not so crass as to make a joke like that – but she hadn’t believed him. Lexie may have been annoying, but she wasn’t stupid. They’d had lunch two afternoons ago and Meredith had made Lexie promise that she wasn’t going to work until this guy was found.

“I tried, Addison,” Alex says in his defense as Addison turns to him for an explanation. He’d been told to keep her away, that there was plenty of time to see the body, but not like this, not naked on an exam table. And he had tried, but Meredith is feisty and he’s pretty sure he’s going to have a black eye in the morning.

Addison waves him off and lets Meredith grieve for a few minutes before gesturing for Alex to drag her home; he has debts to collect from last night, she needs to talk to Arizona alone. When it’s just her, Arizona and Lexie’s body again, Addison speaks. “You’re not holding out on me, are you?”

“I swear to God, Addison. I’m not.”

“And,” Addison makes a face, not quite believing that she’s about to say this, “you’re not holding out on the cops, are you?”

Arizona shakes her head. “No. I’ve been over Violet, Lexie and the Stevens girl twice. Guy’s got some serious anger toward whores.”

Addison exhales sharply. “No kidding.”

* * *

  
Cristina glares at Burke from across the room. “No. I told you. I told you when we started dating and I told you when picked up Montgomery’s case. I’m not telling you anything I know from work. No.”

“Cristina…”

“Don’t Cristina me. I don’t know anything about this guy, alright? All I know is, he’s got people scared. Everyone. Cops, whores, dancers, everyone. And I got everyone asking me when you’re gonna do something about it.” She crosses her arms. She’s not angry, not really, but she’s about had it with hearing about dead hookers on a daily basis and being told that it’s somehow her boyfriend’s fault that they haven’t found the guy already. Plus, she spent all day cleaning up from the brawl last night and then had to work a full shift.

Burke sighs and falls into the nearest chair. “I’m sorry,” he says and closes his eyes.

“Excuse me?”

He opens one eye. “You heard me. I’m not saying it again.” He can’t help the smile that crosses his lips.

Cristina laughs. “Anything I can do? I can unleash my wrath on the city.”

Burke snorts. “That’ll scare him into hiding.”

* * *

  
Mark wakes with the movement on the mattress. He blinks away the vestiges of sleep and tries to make out the clock on the wall; he can’t see it – the moon’s hidden tonight behind a veil of clouds and rain – but he knows enough to know that it’s too damn early. A shadow catches his attention and he looks at the corner to find Addison standing by the window, wrapping a dressing gown around herself against the constant chill that’s taken up residence these past few months.

“What’s wrong?” He asks, voice quiet.

She startles and turns to face him, her features cast in shadow. “Ten, Mark.”

Even through shadow and night, Mark can tell she’s upset. Not scared; she isn’t a target and no man, insane killer or not, would dare to touch her. But unsettled, more than she usually is when the unexpected happens. He rises from the bed, a little chilly without a shirt, and silently walks over the hardwood floor to where she stands.

Addison reaches out and touches his chest, tracing muscles and scars; her fingers linger on a particularly jagged imperfection, a bullet wound from the war. He told her the story once, that he was young and stupid and hadn’t yet learned how to duck. “There’s a war on,” she says. There’s more weighing on her mind than just the ten dead women.

“I know,” Mark says and tugs her close. They’ve listened to the radio and read the papers. If they’re very lucky, Europe will take care of it. “I’m not going anywhere,” he says, reassuring her that if it comes to it, he won’t be running off to war again.

She snorts. She’s not worried about that; he’s too old to be at the front lines. “I have a bad feeling about this guy, Mark,” she says, changing the subject to something a little closer to home.

“Like in New York?”

She nods and rests her cheek against his chest. “Like in New York.”

* * *

  
Burke steps out of the elevator and pauses, instantly recognizing that something’s wrong. The precinct’s too silent, despite the number of people in it. He scans the room, looking for anything amiss.

And then he hears it. Behind the closed door of the Chief’s office. Judge Teddy Altman.

Yelling.

“What the hell happened?” He asks Hahn in a quiet whisper.

“Altman and Avery showed up about an hour ago, right after we released Lexie Grey’s name to the papers. Apparently ten dead working girls is something we should not have allowed to happen in our fair city. They’re not pleased that it’s taking us this long to figure out who did it.”

“I’d like to see them try,” Burke grumbles. His eyes land on Duquette, voice hushed as he talks to someone on the phone. The man looks like he hasn’t slept in days. He probably hasn’t. Burke takes a step toward his desk, but Duquette waves his hand and gestures for Burke to come over and wait a moment while he finishes the phone call.

“Alright. Thank you for your help. If I find anything, I’ll let you know.” Denny hangs up the phone and scrubs a hand over his face. “I hate to do this to you, but we gotta go talk to Montgomery.”

Burke’s eyebrow lifts almost clear off his forehead. “Excuse me?”

Denny looks around the room. All ears are perked up, hoping to catch a snippet of anything juicy. “Not here.” He leads the way out of the precinct and back out onto the street.

“That was Amelia Shepherd on the phone,” he explains once they’re out in broad daylight and anything overheard will be instantly forgotten. “She didn’t have much. Started out with the same thought we did: that it was Montgomery taking out the competition. Came to the same conclusion we did; Montgomery doesn’t kill the competition, she brings them into her own. And she wouldn’t kill her own girls. They never found anyone to pin them on, but she always thought that the murders were too clean to be done someone average. The guy knows where to cut to make them bleed as fast and as much as possible.”

“Sounds like the mob,” Burke says, sliding into the passenger seat of Duquette’s car. “She’ll be at the Archfield,” he offers.

Denny shakes his head. “They figured out early on it wasn’t the mob.”

Burke glances sideways at the other detective. “I’m confused.”

“You must’ve been hit on the head real hard, Burke. Who’s Montgomery’s ex-husband?”

“Shepherd.”

“And he is…?”

“A doctor.” Burke blinks. “Son of a bitch.”

* * *

  
The mid-afternoon sun glints off the glass door as it opens and Addison looks up from her martini. She squints in the dim light and makes out the profile of two detectives; one known for getting himself injured, and the other who she had dumped at the hospital not seven days earlier. She chuckles to herself and nods for Callie to go find something else to do while she talks to them. “Gentlemen,” she says smoothly, “would you like a drink?”

Miranda silently takes orders for one iced tea and one lemonade and disappears toward the bar.

Burke stares after her. He’s no longer wearing the sling, but he’s obviously injured and she didn’t even so much as glance in his direction. He’s still dismayed that she betrayed him, but he supposes he can understand business and money.

“What can I do for you this fine afternoon?”

Addison’s voice calls him back to the present. “You can talk to us about Derek Shepherd,” Burke says, cutting through the hoops of bullshit she’d normally have them jump through.

Addison’s eyes narrow. “He’s my ex-husband, Burke. You know this.”

Burke nods. “Yes. Divorced six years ago in New York, citing irreconcilable differences. You took an internship with Murder Inc. and he did…what, exactly?”

“Let’s clarify a couple of things, Preston. First of all, I didn’t ‘take an internship’ with anyone. Meyer Lansky approached me in the hospital, said someone in his organization was having a baby but couldn’t leave the house because of…” she pauses to remember the exact phrasing, “‘unfortunate public opinion’ and needed me to come to her. I saved her life; her husband and his friends gave me a job that paid way more than the hospital could hope to match. And secondly, what my ex-husband did with his life after he moved all of his shit out of my house is of no concern to me.”

Denny leans back in the cracked leather booth and nods his thanks at Miranda. He sips at his lemonade. “So would it surprise you that two months after your divorce, prostitutes started showing up dead in Manhattan morgues?”

“I remember hearing something about that. What are you two getting at?” It doesn’t always work, but luckily playing dumb earns her a few minutes of reprieve this time. She turns everything over in her mind while Duquette and Burke lay out what little information they have in hope of earning themselves a case-breaking clue from her.

And then, suddenly, it hits her.

“Excuse me, gentlemen. I’ve just remembered that I have a dinner appointment this evening that I cannot reschedule. Drinks are on me.” She excuses herself with a polite smile and swiftly exits to the kitchen. “Call Alex,” she tells Callie, interrupting to woman’s conversation with the chef, “send him to Meredith’s.” She sweeps out the back door to where Mark is leaning on the black Chrysler, smoking and watching the sunset. “Hospital,” she orders. “Now.”

She checks the rearview mirror, but doesn’t notice the car following them.

* * *

  
“You sorry son of a bitch,” Addison says, gun cold in her hand. Her heels are silent on the pavement as she walks purposefully toward Derek, standing in the shadows of the alleyway behind the hospital. She exhales carefully, concealing her relief at finding him here and not on his way to his girlfriend’s apartment with the intent to turn her into a canoe. “You couldn’t let it go, could you? You killed them all in New York and you’re killing them all here.”

Derek snorts. “Glad you could join the class, Addison.” He pulls a butterfly knife out of his back pocket and flicks it open. The blade gleams in the lamplight.

Addison’s heart quickens at the knife. “I’m not a whore, Derek,” Addison spits out, “killing me doesn’t fit into your grand plan. That’s what this is, isn’t it? Redemption? Kill enough whores and Daddy will come back to life?”

It’s instinct, the way he balls his hand into a fist and punches. He sends her stumbling into the brick wall, blood from her cheek on his knuckles

“Derek Shepherd, you’re under arrest for the murder of Sydney Heron, Lucy Fields, Olivia Harper, Katharine Wyatt, Sadie Harris, Megan Mostow, Isobel Stevens, April Kepner, Violet Turner, and Lexie Grey.” Denny walks out of the shadows as he recites the list of dead women, names he’s committed to memory. He trains his gun on Derek’s forehead, fully intending to shoot if Derek so much as sneezes.

Derek turns to run down the alley but stops short, finding himself staring down the barrel of Burke’s gun.

“Drop the knife, Shepherd,” Burke orders.

It clatters to the pavement in defeat.


	6. midnight

Burke will never stop being amazed by the amount of chaos that develops after arresting a suspect. There was no theft, no arson, no murder, no immediate crime scene, and yet the alley is filled with detectives and beat cops and lawyers and reporters. He finds Addison sitting on a box far away from the commotion, holding ice to her cheek. For a moment, he’s surprised that neither of her goons are around. Then he remembers that there are active warrants out for their arrests. “Are you okay?” He checks the deep shadows around them, just in case one or both are lurking with the desire to break some more ribs.

She manages to shrug and nod at the same time and make it elegant. “Had worse,” she says, taking the ice away long enough to move her jaw around. “Nice timing.”

“You’re welcome,” he smirks, even though she didn’t actually thank him and it was Duquette’s call. “What did you mean, about bringing his father back to life?”

Addison looks at him sideways. “You’re a good detective, Burke. Why don’t you tell me what you found out?”

He cocks his head. “I was looking up you, not him.”

Addison laughs at that and licks her lips. “Well. Derek’s family owned a grocery store. One night, his dad was working late, restocking. A drunk and his hooker broke in, tried to rob him. When his dad fought back, the guy shot him. Apparently the girl put the man up to it because he didn’t have enough money to pay her. Derek’s had it in for working girls ever since.”

Burke nods as she stands up, leaving the ice on the box. There’s a car suddenly idling at the other end of the alley. “Can I ask you something?”

She turns. “Sure.”

“Did you kill O’Malley?”

Addison offers him a smile, brilliant and mysterious even in the gaslight shadows, before walking away.

“You didn’t answer my question,” he calls.

She glances over her shoulder. “I said you could ask. I didn’t say anything about answering.”

Burke watches her disappear into the car and drive off into the rain beginning to fall. He sighs and writes it off as something he’s sure of in his gut but will never see the light of day. “You need me?” He asks Duquette once he’s back in the crowd.

“Nah. Go on home. Thanks for your help tonight.”

“No problem,” Burke shakes his coworker’s hand and leaves the alley. He makes a stop by Duquette’s car to pick up his hat and sets it on his head.

With one last look at the crowd behind him, he walks off into the rainy night, looking for his girl, a drink, and some sleep.


End file.
